Kozlowski: America’s absent President

The president of the United States is arguably the most recognizable person in the world. The president of the United States is arguably the most recognizable person in the world. Though we are routinely treated to videos of people on the street who don’t know who the speaker of the House is or who can’t name five Supreme Court justices, I would be willing to bet a whole round of quantitative easing that most people know who the president is.

Granted, they might not know exactly what his powers and responsibilities are, but the guy’s name is a start. Unfortunately, there are an awful lot of people who don’t know exactly what it is that the president is doing, and I’m one of them.

Barack Obama has displayed a lot of irritating tendencies, from his messianic pronouncements that the moment he was nominated was the moment that the oceans started to rise more slowly, to his sanctimonious tone regarding the need for civility in politics while at the same time implying that those who disagree with his policies are unpatriotic. But more importantly, there is one aspect of the discussion on which there is a growing consensus that transcends party lines: Obama is not much of a leader. On some of the most important issues facing the United States today, our president is shockingly invisible.

A good example is the recent bill to raise the debt ceiling, coupled with a compromise measure to reduce the deficit. Nobody likes this deal. Republicans hate it because it doesn’t cut the deficit far enough and it’s vague about what specifically gets cut. They accuse John Boehner of selling out to Obama and the Democrats. Democrats are busy screaming about how Obama sold out to Boehner and the Republicans, and they aren’t happy about the deal because it might end up cutting benefits without raising taxes on the wealthy.

The deal that everybody is complaining about was not a result of the well-publicized bargaining between Boehner, Obama and other members of Congress. Those talks fell apart when everybody accused everybody else of refusing to compromise. The bill everyone hates was instead a result of back-room dealings between House Republicans and Senate Democrats, a bill that was put together in a matter of days instead of over the course of weeks of negotiations.

The lack of leadership from the White House on this debt issue manifests itself in three ways. First, while Obama was perfectly willing to obstruct the Republican plans, he offered no substantial plan of his own. Second, the deal that was ultimately enacted was something Obama had to react to, not an event that he helped shape. Third, the White House was largely left out of the loop on the deal House Republicans cut with congressional Democrats, suggesting that those on the Hill put more faith in the ability of the whips in the House and Senate to push a plan through than they did in the White House to accomplish the same task. In other words, the Republicans guessed — correctly, as it turned out — that Democrats in Congress would be able to force the President’s hand more that vice-versa, suggesting that the president might not even be in charge of his own party anymore.

The shortage of leadership is not even especially recent. The signature legislative accomplishment of the Obama administration, health care reform, also saw the president surprisingly absent. Remember? There were two plans that were floating around, one from the House and one from the Senate. But which was “the Obama plan”? From all the noise the White House was making, it seemed like any plan that would clear both houses would get Obama’s signature. This was a bad idea for several reasons. First, Obama was not able to bring to bear the political capital he had because the health reform was seen as an exercise in legislative logrolling instead of the personal interest of the president. This meant that the plan proceeded through Congress very slowly, allowing the opposition to reorganize. Second, when Obama was not leading, he was a lightning rod for criticism of elements of both the House and Senate bills, since both of those could plausibly be said to contain elements for which Obama was rooting. So Obama started losing political capital in the least worthwhile manner possible — waiting for any bill to clear Congress and cross his desk. Whatever you think of Obamacare, the White House handled it very poorly.

With the 2012 election season about to begin, Americans are going to be voting for someone to occupy the most visible office in the land. It is unfortunate that the office’s incumbent has been largely invisible, especially when this country especially needs his leadership.

Write kozthought@gmail.com.